


Close the Distance

by laratoncita



Series: To Live & Die in LA [2]
Category: On My Block (TV)
Genre: Dysfunctional Family, Gangs, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Domestic Violence, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Prison
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-19
Updated: 2019-06-19
Packaged: 2020-05-14 12:13:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,632
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19273072
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/laratoncita/pseuds/laratoncita
Summary: Oscar visits his father once.





	Close the Distance

**Author's Note:**

> quote from princess nokia's "bart simpson," also, i encourage u to read this while listening to they.'s "pops" in order to maximize the emo experience. thx for reading :)

looking to my future is like looking at the sky  
inner city orphan with my hand in apple pie

He visits his father once.

He’s maybe fifteen—been running around with the Santos for a few months already, and his father’s been in jail since the summer before then. When he sits in front of the plexiglass that divides them it feels like he’s seeing a stranger. Jail hasn’t treated his father kindly. Shaved head like usual, sure, but he looks older. Far older than he is, barely twenty when his first son was born. His eyes look tired, more than anything, like he’s never going to get enough sleep to really feel well-rested.

Part of Oscar is maliciously glad. He looks worse than his mother does, and she shoots up nearly anything she can get her hands on, falling over herself when she manages to get to her feet and having to be carried to bed by Oscar when she does. If the rest of them have to suffer on the outside then it’s only fair, he thinks, that his father should suffer on the inside. He can almost pretend it makes up for all the shit he did to them.

Oscar feels like he’s stronger than any kid in the world, though more often than not he doesn’t feel like a kid. Doesn’t feel like a man, either. Maybe he’s just a robot, or an alien, or a half-person thing being tasked with playing at the war the Santos and Prophets seem to think is worth fighting. Oscar doesn’t always believe it.

His father made good on his promise to leave the mother of his children. Maybe it was karma that had him arrested on his third strike not too long after. It left him—not even forty years old, with the same buzzcut he’s had since before he ever started gangbanging, tattoos over his eyebrow and neck and knuckles—in jail on a life sentence with no parole.

“Good,” his mother said when she found out, sober for once even if her hands were clearly shaking. She was sucking on a cigarette, the same brand that Oscar still swipes from her, sometimes. She was frying eggs, the night they found out Cisco Diaz was arrested on a burglary charge they threw the book at him over. They had him on intent to distribute, that first time, and battery the second. None of that, of course, could quite compare to how he liked to throw his baby mama around, or how he may or may not have done the same to his sons.

(Oscar will be stupidly grateful to realize his brother is _almost_ young enough to remember nothing. Makes him think that maybe there’s something or someone out there keeping an eye out for at least one of the Diaz boys.)

The house was hot, when his mother said she was glad her bastard of a baby daddy was in jail. No AC units, the windows in the living room thrown open like it might help against a California summer. Cesar was in his room, entertaining himself surprisingly well for a five year old. He’s good at being alone, unlike Oscar. Sometimes even his doped up mother is better than nobody.

“It’s his third strike,” Oscar said to her. Less a defense than a thing to remember. Penelope laughed.

“Good,” she said again, taking a drag off her cigarette and tapping the ash into the sink. She bared her teeth—stained white from fluoride, snaggle-toothed on one side, her mouth perpetually chapped. She looked like something out of a TV show. For a split second, Oscar thought she looked beautiful. “I hope they fucking gut him.”

Oscar’s seen a few pictures of his mother, back when she was more like a girl and less a woman falling apart at the seams. Cesar looks more like her than he does, but even then, she’s nearly unrecognizable. Long, dark hair, in a braid or in a ponytail. Same dimple as Oscar, wide smile even if her teeth weren’t all that good. She even looks happy in the few pictures where she’s with Cisco. Of course, those are all dated _before_ Oscar was born. There are none of his father after.

The smiles fade from her face once Oscar’s in the picture. There are only one or two of her with Cesar, and in them she looks serious, thin and brittle like she might snap. Privately, Oscar thinks his brother is the last good thing their mother can claim to have had a hand in. She just wasn’t the same, after. Struggled to take care of Cesar the way a newborn needs it, had to have Oscar wake her up to get him fed and washed and changed. Could barely get herself put together, and she wasn’t even doing hard shit like she used to, before she found out she was having Cesar and later, when he got old enough that she could just ignore him.

It used to piss his father off. Something about her dragging her feet without the excuse of drugs got under his skin like nothing else, not a wailing infant or Oscar, trying to keep out of his grasp. They’d get to arguing and he’d get to throwing shit and all the while little Cesar would sleep through the sounds of his mother trying to defend herself against the man he won’t remember. That’s the only good thing about Cisco. He left before he could fuck up Cesar. For that, Oscar’s grateful.

He should’ve grown out of wondering what his father thinks of him, but he hasn’t. He wants to know what he’s thinking, now that they’re facing each other and barely divided by glass. It’s the first time Oscar’s come out to see him, after all, and he almost hoped to show up and find that his name wasn’t on the list. He doesn’t want to be here, but he is anyway. Maybe it’s because Cuchillos showed up himself, said nothing more than _Get your shoes on, kid_ , and off they were, his mother cussing them both out as they left the house.

She doesn’t like Cuchillos. Lately, it seems like she doesn’t much like Oscar, either.

If he’d known he was going to see his father today he might’ve put up a fight. Then again, no one argues with Cuchillos. This is only the second time he’s seen him in person, anyway. Oscar can’t help but listen when he speaks. He’s a big dude, after all, covered in tattoos up to his neck. Behind his ear the name _Magdalena_ is scrawled. His knuckles have two more. He’s on strike two, the same age as Cisco, and he seems to think Oscar is funny, if the way he grins whenever Oscar glances over at him means anything.

Oscar doesn’t know what to make of the attention, especially not now that it has him sitting in jail with a bunch of men he might become. Worse, that the one he’s most and least like is the one he’s apparently here to see. Cisco’s scowling.

“Finally ready to see your old man, eh, niño?” he says into the phone on his side, and Oscar swallows.

“How you been, Pops?” There’s not much else to say, really. Oscar doesn’t even care for the answer, but behind him Cuchillos lingers, having pushed him forward with little more than a, _Vete_. A cold sweat settled over him, then. Caught somewhere between fear and resignation at this first re-meeting.

“How you think?” he says. Heavy eyebrows pulled together. Fingers clenched around the receiver.

Oscar says nothing. Takes in the sallow skin, the paper-thinness of it under these bright lights. Says, finally, “Ma’s doing okay.”

His father laughs.

“That’s a good one,” he says, “you think I fucked her up, mijo? Think it’s my fault she can’t do nothing without a needle in her arm?”

Oscar thinks of those photos of her. Her smiling mouth. How she looks nothing like that anymore, how she only smiles when imagining how her sons’ father might suffer. Maybe it’s her own fault she is the way she is, but maybe his father shouldn’t have beaten the shit out of her any chance he got, either. His mother’s a fuck-up in a lot of ways. That doesn’t mean his father wasn’t ten times worse.

Cisco says, teeth a yellow flash, “Dime, Oscar. Your mama really okay, or just another day closer to finally OD’ing like she stays threatening?”

“You know she always says that,” Oscar says, because it’s true. Because sometimes it feels like she’s saying the truth, when she does. Her thin scarred arms, her tangled hair. The feel of her palm against his face when he drags her to her room to come down outside of Cesar’s line of sight. She says other things, too. Things like _I hate you_ and _you did this_ and _you’re no better than your father_. Gets so high she think he’s _him_ , calls him Cisco and begs him to get her out of there like he promised he would, _remember baby, you remember you said it was you and me forever?_

Maybe it would be mercy, if she did it. Maybe it would be a different kind of hell.

“Qué raro,” his father says. “You grew up real fast, niño. You wasn’t half that tall last I seen you.”

“You miss us?” Oscar says, despite himself, and his eyes burn. Stomach tight, like he might be sick. He doesn’t want to know the answer. He wants to know.

“How’s your brother?” Cisco says instead. Like he cares. Like he didn’t ignore him worse than Penelope still does. It’s answer enough.

“Good,” he says. Pretends everything about this is normal. Pretends Cisco actually wants to know. “Started school. Knows how to read.”

“You was real smart at that age, too,” his father says. Rubs over his jaw—stubbly. Not like how he used to keep outside of jail. Used to rock a cleanshaven face no matter what. “Used to think you might be a real somebody, one day. I hear you running with the Santos now.”

“Yeah,” he says. His tongue feels heavy. Maybe he could’ve been a somebody. Maybe he could’ve been anybody else.  “Since the summer.”

His ribs took a few weeks to heal, bruised and painful. Cesar thought he was real sick, ran around the house looking for change so they could go to the doctor. Oscar tugged him down next to him, instead, recited old stories that their mom used to tell him, back when it was just her and Oscar stuck in the house all day. Tried to make the kid laugh, desperate to make sure he didn’t remember any of this in the coming weeks or months or years. The summer burned hot and running with the Santos made the flames climb higher.

In front of him, his father nods. Looks at him with an almost intrigued expression, like for once he’s considering Oscar like an equal—or at the very least a person. Someone who might not get smacked around for once. The plexiglass might be a blessing. He says, “You a real man, yet, niño?”

Oscar knows what he means. He thinks of Claudia, the classmate he’s been keeping an eye on since he ran into her one night at the park over the summer. Of how he might want to kiss her but can’t bring himself to. He thinks of the girl Santi Guerrero threw at him back in July, the same girl who smiles like she’s the one with the upper hand when he’s in her bed. He thinks of how he knows how to shoot a gun—how it’s easy, even, because he’s always had a good eye and a good arm and now there’s somewhere he can prove it.  He thinks of how he’s faster than he’s ever been before, outrunning squad cars when he needs to and chasing down Prophets, too. He thinks of how he likes the sweet-sour taste of mota on his tongue. None of it feels _wrong_. Maybe that’s what really matters.

He says, “Yeah, Pop,” and his father only nods.

“Good,” his father says, finally, the silence stretching into something almost comfortable before his cigarette-scarred voice breaks it.

Oscar’s world tilts, just a little bit. Something burning settles at his throat. Feels like this is the closest they’ve ever been, closest they’ll ever be, separated by inches of glass and Cisco never getting out of here. Figures that it would take Oscar sinking to his level for them to finally close the distance. He must be doomed to this, the fists and broken bones that his father represents fading to nothing under the Santos’ cross. What a fucking joke.

“Send Cuchillos over,” his father says when it’s clear there’s nothing left to say. Oscar stands, moves back so he can watch them speak like Cuchillos has been watching them. His hands are shaking. A headache’s building between his eyes—a kill-shot like no other. That’s all he can think of.

“Your boy’s real smart,” he hears Cuchillos say. “Was thinking of giving him some new responsibilities, vale? Takes after his old man.”

He doesn’t hear what his father says in response, but it makes Cuchillos laugh.

“No mames, güey,” he says. “Worse shit has happened. Prophets still on their bullshit and us Santos gotta get ahead somehow. I gotta good feeling ‘bout this, carnal.”

They keep talking. Oscar thinks of Cesar, and their mother, and the last words his father said before leaving, the promise on his tongue. They leave not too long after, and the industrial lights inside the building make Oscar’s head throb. The officers watch him suspiciously. They can probably tell, too, that he’s bound to end up here. Part of him wants to demand they give him a fucking chance, but then he remembers he’s friends with dudes like Santi and related to them, too. This was all he was meant for. No school in Pasadena was ever going to change that.

It comes too easily, this life he’s living. He beat the shit out of a Prophet in front of his girl and didn’t even feel bad. Took the punches he tossed back and could only think it wasn’t shit, not compared to the feel of fists and feet against his ribs, his shoulders. Don’t nobody have a better arm than him, either. Smashed a cop’s window, and managed to outrun it just fine. When he picked him up, Cuchillos told him he hadn’t heard of a kid getting away with that shit in ages. He seemed almost proud.

“I like you, kid,” Cuchillos says as they drive away. He pulls a joint out from center console, lights up in a smooth movement that doesn’t even jostle the wheel. He exhales, and the car fills with acrid smoke. Next to him, Oscar watches the jail shrink in the side mirror. Takes the joint when it’s handed to him and waits for Cuchillos to speak.

“Lemme tell you,” he says, once he’s finally ready, “I see big things in your future, kid, _big_ things, shit that’s impossible. Can’t nobody else do it but us, homie. You the next big one. It’s almost spooky.”

Cuchillos laughs.

“How you like that?” he asks, grinning at him. Oscar holds his breath, smoke in his lungs. He can’t see the prison’s gate anymore. “Spooky. You real spooky, kid, sabes? I think the homies’ll like that one.”

“Vale,” Oscar says, a quiet stretch of road unfurling ahead, and wonders if his mother remembered to pick up Cesar from school. Maybe it’s not too late for at least one of them. Maybe he believes it.


End file.
